Prplwrt PEG ideas

OpenWrt PEG Ideas

Why have a prpl Engineering Group focused on an already successful community development project? To help open a dialog between industry and the community on enhancement ideas. Today, many companies don't know who to turn to within the community. Here are some ideas:

Value-add software

OpenWrt is commonly used by independent software vendors because they can develop and add their own software to an off-the-shelf Wi-Fi enabled router. OpenWrt enables not just Wi-Fi routers but also Internet of Things hubs and clients too. But these ideas bring new challenges:

how to make it easy to install 3rd party value-added software (even on products that are already deployed)

need security to protect the core platform functionality against runaway/buggy/malicious add-on sw (do not want all daemons running as root)

Carriers are asking for "software platform" standards that they can adopt to take part in a broader "connected home" services ecosystem

the home broadband gateway is an always on device that can offer data storage and processing and proxy a secure link to cloud services on behalf of local clients with limited capability

a gateway device can also be used to translate data across disparate connectivity devices (Wi-Fi, Ethernet, PLC, BT, ...)

carriers also have high standards for security (see bullet above) while also requiring very high-performance networking capability

Common developer platforms

select/identify hardware platforms that would be good for development

enables more focus on software, since the hardware is known to work well

OEM, ODM, and reference design hardware enablement

make it easier for OEMs to work with OpenWrt community developers to get more of their hardware able to be reflashed with OpenWrt

develop a program for industry to give away more free hardware to the community

encourage OEMs, ODMs, and silicon companies to perform ongoing regression testing of OpenWrt trunk and recent stable releases (AA, BB) on a variety of hardware to catch regressions early